


Fire Exit: Do Not Block

by Vrunka



Series: Fire Safety Compliance [5]
Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: M/M, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-23
Updated: 2018-05-23
Packaged: 2019-05-13 01:04:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14739180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vrunka/pseuds/Vrunka
Summary: The world ends. Immolation. Pretty messed up that Joseph Seed was right in the end but something in Sharky thrills at the sight.





	Fire Exit: Do Not Block

“Shark,” Dep’s voice says. Filtered over the radio, scratchy. It’s been a few days. More than a few. Last Sharky saw Dep had been dragging himself out of bed at ass-crack early in the morning, mumbling something about being close to done. Only a few more loose ends.

He’s a machine.

And Sharky has become more than used to it, which is part of the problem, isn’t it?

The confession those nights ago, whispered into Sharky’s back has not been forgotten, flutters under Sharky’s ribs when he examines it too closely. Dep’s painful humanity. A dude with the weight of the world literally shoved onto his shoulders.

He toggles the switch for the radio, holds it to his mouth. “Read you, Dep, what’s up?”

A rolling groan. Shattered sounding. Sharky feels his heart rate overturn and it’s weeks ago again and Dep is lost somewhere in the Valley. But everywhere has been liberated, everywhere is safe, little check marks on Dep’s map that now is a staple on Sharky’s kitchen table. Only Old Father Joe left.

Only Old Father Joe and his fortified little compound in the middle of the County.

“Dep?”

“I’m here, Sharky. Fuck. I’m...”

“Where are you? Wh-what’s happening?”

He hears Dep cough. Rattling through the radio. He hears Dep groan. Then clearer.

“They’re dead. Fuck me, they’re dead.”

“Joseph is?” Sharky asks. He can barely even hope, hardly dares to. If Joseph is dead then it is over. Once and for all. Over. He wonders if he’ll still be a wanted man once order is restored or if fucking the face of the Resistance will grant him some sort of immunity from his outstanding arson warrant.

There is silence for a beat. For two. “Dep?” Sharky tries again. “Joseph is?”

“No,” Dep says. “No. He’s—“ there’s a rush of static, some sort of fuckin’ overlay. Sharky shakes his walkie like it will help the transmission clear. Which is doesn’t but, it’s the thought that counts right?

Feels more like action then just saying: “What? Dep, you’re breaking up on me. Can’t hear you, man.”

“Staci...and Joey...Christ. I-I-I don’t—“

There is panic in his voice. Not flat or inflectionless like it can get, but pitched and bordering hysteric.

“Where are you?”

“Don’t come here,” Dep says. Clearly. Firmly. “Sharky you...you can’t—I-I made a mistake. I’ve made a—“

But Sharky is already going. He’s already got his keys and Dep’s map in one hand the radio in the other. “Too late, buddy,” he says. “Gotta tell me where. Are you hurt? Are the other deputies?”

He pulls the door to his truck open. Has one leg in the cab when the walkie crackles in what he can only call an admonishing manner. Sharp, sticky, static.

And then, clear as day:

“They’re fucking dead, Sharky. You can’t come out here...I don’t know if it’s...if it’s over.”

Sharky pauses. One hand on the roof of his truck, skin prickling on the hot metal. One leg in the cab. They’re dead.

They’re dead?

He didn’t really know them, so it isn’t exactly mourning he feels at the news. More like a hollowness, a yawning sort of opening deep in his gut. They’re dead and Dep is scared.

Terrified.

More than Sharky has ever heard before.

Rationally, Sharky knows that he should feel even more afraid. That whatever it is, whatever has happened, someone as cowardly and utterly normal as him can hardly stand up to it.

“Dep,” he says. The metal under his hand burning, burning. “Tell me where you are.”

Dep makes a noise. An anguished sort of keen. Something high pitched and shredded between his teeth. “I shouldn’t have called you,” Dep says. “I just didn’t...”

“You have to slow down, tell me what happened. I’m gonna come get you. We’ll figure it out.”

“I’m...by the—“ a pause, getting his bearings, Sharky can imagine Dep with his head cocked, muscles tense. “The old saloon. Hollyhock. God. God, Sharky, I’m so sorry.”

“Sorry for what, man? It’s nothing, okay. Okay? We’ll sort it out. Just. Just stay put, I’m coming as fast as I can.”

And he is.

He does.

Luckily it isn’t all that far and with the Peggie activity down since Faith’s death it’s almost a normal drive again. Almost.

Sharky can’t help the sinking feeling that something is wrong, wrong. The other two deputies are dead and Joseph is not and Dep is fucking scared. He tries to piece together what it is that has him on edge; the looming picture he is beginning to scratch the surface of, unable to focus on it in its entirety, and fails.

He pulls up to the saloon where Dep is standing and waiting.

He’s been crying.

There is a stain on his jacket that Sharky assumes might be vomit. The cuffs of his sleeves are sprinkled with blood. An artistic, cinematic spray of red in the silver white material.

“What happened?” Sharky asks. He starts to get out of the car, to approach, and Dep takes a step back. Shaking his head. Holding a hand between the two of them. He’s trembling, Sharky can see his jumping muscles even with the distance.

“Dep, man, you have to-to-to like talk to me, okay?”

“I shouldn’t have—“ Dep says. His voice is still thick and full with that deep, horrible sorrow. Eyes still wet. Track marks in the dirt that is plastered on his cheeks. “I made a mistake. I never should have come here.”

“Here? The bar? You drunk, Dep?” Sharky says. Trying to keep his tone light. Teasing the way they have fallen into so naturally before. It falls flat, it doesn’t land.

Dep shakes his head. “Here. Fucking here. He gave me the chance to walk away the first time and I should have. We all—“ he cuts himself off. Hands grabbing at his head as he crouches, sinks to his haunches.

Anguish, Sharky thinks again, this is a broken man.

And from what?

“Where are they?” Sharky asks.

Dep points, silent. Toward Joseph’s compound. “It’s about a quarter mile,” Dep says. “You can’t miss the car. Whitehorse is...” He looks up, meets Sharky’s gaze. “You won’t miss it.”

Sharky doesn’t. Little less than a quarter mile down the main road and he finds it, veered off the side. A tire bleeding rubber, trailing it like guts. A broken axel. Oil slick on the pavement. A car crash in freeze frame.

Fuckin’ poetry.

But the crash isn’t what killed the two people inside. Whitehorse took a bullet to the temple; he was driving, the impact of the hot slug arching through his brain must have misfired a signal, made him wrench the wheel so hard it fucked the whole steering column.

Pratt is dead in the backseat as well. Eyes open and glassy. Spray of blood from his throat across the back window. Sharky can see it from the open back door, driver’s side, ripped open in haste.

Hudson’s body is just a little further out.

Face up in a ditch at the side of the road. Sharky kind of wishes he hadn’t looked. His stomach turns. Where her eyes should be is just a bloody, pulpy mess. Gore. Her mouth is frozen in a grimace, lip split, showing her teeth.

Sharky turns. Throws up.

It takes him a long, long time to make his way back to the saloon and his truck and Dep.

And Dep.

Dep.

“You killed them?” he asks.

Dep looks up from where he has collapsed onto the ground. Tread of his sneakers digging trenches in the earth. He takes a hissing breath. “I’m pretty sure, yeah.”

“You don’t know?”

“I know.”

“Can I ask why?”

“Are you asking?”

“Fuck. I mean. Yeah. Fuck it. Yes. Why? Why the hell would you—“

“I don’t have an answer for you. I don’t have...John was right. Jacob was right. I’m...I’m fucking—“ Dep pulls another breath between his teeth. Folds in on himself.

Sharky is torn.

He’s never been good at this shit.

“And Joseph?”

“I...I abandoned so many people. I just wanted it to be over. Want it to be over. And it’s...it’s not ever gonna be over. Not ever. I never should have started it. I should have walked away. Do you get that? This was inevitable from the start because I was never Strong enough to-to see it to the end—“

He’s rambling. Coherencies that are completely incoherent. Sharky can’t follow from jump to jump even if the words are clear and English.

“Dep,” he says. “Just shut up, okay?”

Dep takes a shuddering breath and does.

Sharky remembers asking if he was a sociopath, all those months ago. Snapping the Peggie’s neck, slitting another’s throat, gouging Hudson’s eyes out with his bare hands. Holy fuckin’ shit.

He opens his mouth. He doesn’t know what he is going to say.

Never gets the chance to say anything at all.

There’s a flash. Off in the distance to the west. Brilliant and bright and momentary as a star. Whatever Sharky was going to say dies in his throat as he turns his head.

Every instinct tells him not to.

But Sharky has never been good at listening to that survival tool either.

He turns in time to see the mushrooming cloud billowing up from just beyond the mountain range. His brain starts to define all the things he knows about atom bombs and fallout safety and all he can think of is Supermutants and how Dogmeat wasn’t as useful as Boomer when it came to an end of times scenario.

There’s a hand on his shoulder.

Dep’s hand.

Covered in Hudson.

Sharky finds himself shoved into the truck. The parking break jammed into his side as Dep forces his body into the passenger seat. The door clips his knee as Dep slams it closed.

There’s a fuckin’ mushroom cloud.

There’s a fuckin—

Dep is in the driver’s side, he’s cranking the keys and he’s saying: “I know, I know, Sharky shut up please.” And it’s only then that Sharky realizes he’s saying it out loud.

The world is ending.

The engine roars to life.

Sharky clicks his seatbelt into place. Safety first and all. He lets out a shrill, hysterical little sound at that. It’s been a minute, maybe. Less than.

Time is funny when everything is falling to hell around them.

The fires are starting.

The fires start. And Disco fuckin’ Inferno is blaring over Sharky’s radio.

The world ends. Immolation.

Pretty fucked up that Joseph Seed was right.

Pretty fucked up.

Dep is driving them somewhere, the world on fire flashes by behind the windows. Everything is fucking burning and something in Sharky thrills at the sight even as he knows that this is the goddamn end. He should be terrified, horrified, but he’s so far beyond that that he just feels a numb, vague sort of wonder.

They’re going to die.

Because Joseph Seed was goddamn right all the whole goddamn time.

The heat feels like it’s blistering Sharky’s skin even through the window, burning hot enough to boil the glass. A deer bounding through the trees catches fire as it runs, terror-stricken and doomed.

Sharky has a hand in Dep’s; fucking stupid, Dep needs to be driving, both hands on the wheel, safety first, but Sharky’s fingers are locked tight, and Dep’s don’t seem to be loosening either so it’s probably fine.

As fine as anything can be.

Dep spins the wheel, one handed. The tires squeals. “Go,” he is yelling, pointing. They haven’t outrun the fire but they’ve put some small distance between themselves and the heart of the inferno. Sharky can breath the air and it only sort of feels like it is scorching his lungs.

Dep is pulling him out of the car.

Yelling in his face.

“We have to, Sharky, come the fuck on! Come on!”

They have to.

In a blur, Sharky goes.

There is a hatch. There is a ladder. He collapses at the bottom of it. Sharky’s legs give out, his body revolts. Vomiting again, though there is little left in his stomach to purge. The world on fire blazes behind his eyes when he squeezes them shut.

“Oh my God,” Dep is saying. Crumpled next to Sharky at the base of the ladder. Staring up at the hatch door he has sealed behind them. “Holy fucking fuck.”

Sharky nods. His hand finds Dep’s again, curling their fingers together. “Yeah,” he says. His voice is rougher than usual. His throat feels raw. Charred. “Holy shit.”

With hatch closed the world around them is silent. Just their breathing, the uneven chorus of it. Dep’s fingers twitch in Sharky’s grip. “We’re alive,” Sharky says, ”right?”

The sound of Dep’s tongue rasping over his lips is nearly deafening in the quiet.

“Yeah,” he says. “I mean I think so.”

Sharky nods, head bouncing against the third lowest rung of the ladder. Little sounds in the metal that echo, echo.

“Where are we?”

“I...I don’t know who’s it used to be but...when I saw the—something with a V I think. I don’t...don’t remember.”

Sharky closes his eyes. “It’s okay, Dep.” He longs to tell him how fuckin’ cool he is, levelheaded while the world went to shit around them, but Dep’s knuckles are still sticky red with Hudson’s eye juice, blood beneath his nails and truthfully it’s still fucking Sharky up something bad.

What could have happened?

What goddamn explanation could there be for it?

Not the hero Wheaty or Jerome or Whitehorse thinks he is indeed; but this transgression goes so far beyond just that. He killed them. He saved Sharky. The inconsistencies are too much.

“I would have died if you hadn’t like you know dragged me to safety so uhh thanks for that I guess,” Sharky says.

“Of course. I just...I can’t believe it. I-I-I—he was right.”

“Jesus,” Sharky says. “Don’t say that.”

“He was though. Is. Maybe not about all of it but—“

“Dep, for real. Stop fuckin’ talking, man.”

And only then, saying it—stop, Jesus, please, just stop, stop—does it really click into place for him. Hurk. Aunt Addie. Nick Rye. Grace. Fuckin’ Jess.

They’re all dead.

Or as good as.

Or worse than.

He covers his eyes with his hands as the shaking starts. The numb panic giving way to...well to some pussy shit. Sobbing into his fingers. Overwhelmed by it. The sudden, drowning feeling of loss.

Everyone he knew or has known beyond Dep are-are—

“Sharky,” Dep says, low in his throat. His arm snaking around Sharky’s shoulder to squeeze the two of them together. Sharky half-expects to be told to get his shit together, to man up.

He should know Dep better by now.

“I know,” Dep says. “I know.”

Above them, the world burns.

Sharky turns his head to cry into Dep’s shoulder, grasping at his jacket, holding him close. Shaking. Trembling. His nose is stuffy from the sudden onset of his tears. His head aches.

And all the while, Dep’s soothing, calming voice. “I know. I know. I know.” Steady.

And even.

A machine. A robot.

Or all too human and raw, pulpy and hard to look at. Hard to consider.

So Sharky doesn’t. He lives in the moment, and this moment is this: sobbing on the floor of some stranger’s bunker letting a man he has come to love pet his shoulder and shush him, gentle.

“I know. I know.”

I know.

—

Eventually they part. They need to figure out the next step, or Dep does. Sharky has pretty much absolved their survival to him.

He pokes further in while Dep rustles around in a side room. The bunker is pretty tiny compared to others Sharky has seen. A very straight forward layout. A goddamn Sunday hobby for whoever built it. Like a joke.

But there’s a water purifier and an air filter and plenty of canned goods all stacked up in a row. A tiny bathroom, toilet and sink and bare, bare shower. Curtain-less, they must have never gotten around to it. There’s a fishing magazine from 2015 left in the corner behind the toilet. The pages dog-eared, the front cover faded with age.

Sharky runs his fingers over it.

Wonders idly if the fish will grow legs or superpowers or some shit now.

He wanders back to what can only be called the main living area. There’s a small couch, a lamp. A bare bookshelf. Half-finished like everything else around here.

He finds Dep still in that side room, bent over a radio that takes up most of the table space. He’s fiddling with the dials but all that’s coming out of the speakers is static and more static.

“No luck?”

Dep looks over his shoulder, frowning. He shakes his head and flips the power off. “I’m not getting anything. Find anything useful?”

“They were weekend preppers, hardly have shit,” Sharky says. “Found a mini stove and some cans of food. No booze though, lame, and like a twenty four count of toilet paper, so we’re gonna be fucked there in about a week.”

Somehow, someway, Sharky’s words tickle Dep enough to make him smile. His eyes close. He leans his hands on the table. Nods. “Nice,” he says. “Awesome.”

“Thought you’d like that. Don’t worry though, someone decided to leave us Bait and Tackle weekly from like four years ago, so we got shit to read.”

“Good. Yeah, no, that’s great. Wouldn’t want us to be bored to death, you know?” Dep is still grinning and despite the fact that the world has literally ended, Sharky finds himself smiling back. “One single issue of Bait and Tackle for the next seven years. Oh man yeah, we’re golden.”

“That how long Joseph predicted this shit would last?”

“I...don’t remember. Revelations wasn’t really my book, you know. We don’t really subscribe to all that New Testament stuff.”

Right. Jewish. Sharky looks down at his feet.

“Doesn’t seem to be a bed anywhere down here either,” Sharky says, “‘less the couch is a pullout. Gonna be cramped if that’s so.”

Dep freezes. He’s wiped his fingers clean and discarded his jacket but the memory is still there and he obviously knows it cuz his fingers twitch before curling in on themselves.

“We can switch off if you’re more comfortable. Take turns.”

“No homo?” Sharky says. It’s cruel, he says it just to watch the flicker of hurt across Dep’s face.

“If you want.”

Does Sharky want? He doesn’t even know. The memory of Dep’s dick is just as fresh in his mind as the one of Hudson’s eye-matter. The clenching deep in his belly when he thinks of Dep naked over top of him. Dep inside of him.

“I don’t know. Whole thing might be moot if these dumbfucks didn’t even put a bed in down here.”

Dep says nothing; staring down at his hands and the surge of guilt Sharky feels is sharper than the slight pleasure he had gotten from his cruelty. He reaches out, touches Dep’s shoulder. Just touches him. Briefly. Like they are strangers.

In a way, Sharky supposes they sort of are.

His name isn’t Dep, even if he has adopted the moniker. Sharky doesn’t know his name because Dep has never volunteered it. Because Sharky has never asked. More than willing to accept Dep at face value, the one-dimensional killing machine. Made for breaking Seed bones and murdering Peggie converts.

Not a person just a fucking macine.

It’s difficult to swallow the fact that even he had reduced Dep to such a definition. Not really any better than John and his Wrath. Than Jacob and his Strength. Than the Resistance and their Hope. Their weapon.

Sharky’s fingers tense. He starts to pull away, guilty.

Dep grasps his wrist before he can get too far. His grip is tight, tight; Sharky swears he can feel the bones move and shift beneath the skin.

They stand like that, neither of them speaking. Suspended. Waiting. Sharky doesn’t know for what.

“I should-should-should check the couch,” Sharky says. Not pulling away.

Dep takes a breath, blinks, nods. His fingers loosen. “Right,” he says. “Yeah, you’re right.”

“You can—that is I...I didn’t mean the thing about sharing, Dep. We’re...we’re fine. You saved me, I owe you my goddamn bacon—“

Dep makes a face, nose wrinkling slightly. Right, Jewish. Sharky shakes his head. “Errr my...skin? My life, whatever, dude, you should get it.”

“I get it, Sharky.”

“Yeah well. Stop like...lookin’ like that then. It’s bumming me out. After everything that’s happened, I don’t think either of us need any more downer shit, right? At least not today?”

Dep blows his breath out between his teeth. He leans back against the table. “Right,” he says. “Deal.”

Deal.

A peace of sorts.

Sharky can deal with that.

—

Sharky is gonna kill whoever built this place—never mind that they’re probably already dead what with the violent cult takeover and the resulting nuclear fallout; but if they aren’t, he hopes he gets to meet them one day, sock them right in the jaw. 

The good news is the couch is a pullout.

The bad news is it’s just a little too long to fit in the tight space of the living area. Some asshole didn’t measure and Sharky has to push the entire television table set-up to the side in order to get the damn thing flat. That said, the bed is huge, will easily fit he and Dep and is already mostly made with a flowered sheet fitted around the mattress, but moving the table back and forth constantly is gonna get old and fast.

Sharky collapses down onto the bed.

The springs squeak.

Cheap metal complaining at his weight.

Yeah, Sharky is gonna kill them.

But it’s a bed. And being properly horizontal for the first time in what feels like days—has actually been closer to an hour if Dep’s wristwatch is to be believed—hits Sharky like a truck. His eyes slide closed.

And when he opens them again, he feels groggy, heavy. The lighting hasn’t changed, the electric genny is doing her thing, puttering away in the room with the radio, a high frequency buzzing that Sharky has noticed and cannot un-notice now. Time has passed, he doesn’t know how he knows, but he knows. He pinches the bridge of his nose. His hat must have been knocked off in his fitful rest. He fixes it back on his head and takes stock.

Nothing has changed. Nothing has changed and it is doing things to Sharky’s carefully tended personal reality. It wasn’t all a terrible dream. It wasn’t all a nightmare. What has happened to his own bed back home? His couch? His kitchen table with the goddamn cheap plastic tablecloth?

His friends...

Nick and Kim and the little baby. And Hurk. Fuckin’ Hurk.

Sharky covers his face with his hands. Digs his fingers against his eyes until he sees stars, explosions of color in the dark. He tries not to think of Hudson, snarling, Dep putting his thumbs into her skull; he tries instead to come up with anything to distract him from the spiraling depression he can feel in his teeth, building behind his eyes.

“Sharky...” Dep says. He’s standing by the canned goods, was sorting them apparently. The sound of metal coming to rest against the shelving, Dep’s somewhat heavy trod.

Sharky sniffs. He pushes his hat slightly lower on his head and sits up. His sunglasses were lost somewhere in the mad dash from the truck to the bunker. Sharky touches the bill where they normally sit and feels the loss more deeply than he should.

“What’s up, Dep?” He sounds normal, he tells himself he sounds normal and not at all wrecked and tense and about to cry all over again.

Dep is biting his lip. Looking down at him. Tightness around his eyes, dark circles that make it look like he’s been punched in the face. Sharky is sure he doesn’t look much better though. He can feel the tension in his cheeks, skin pulled taut and gaunt with stress.

“I don’t know how to make this any better,” Dep says.

So much for no downers. Sharky pinches the bridge of his nose again. “It’s not your job to,” Sharky says. “I’m not your...your responsibility.”

“No but I want to help.” Dep sits, gently, lowering himself onto the other side of the bed. Plenty of room. The space between them that had seemed so nonexistent before this whole thing started now seems uncrossable. Unmanageable. Dep reaches over to squeeze Sharky’s shoulder and still the distance persists.

They could be fucking and it would still be there.

A dissonance in what they had had that Sharky isn’t sure how to correct.

“I’m just...stuck in my head. Processing this shit. I’m sorry. I know I-I was the one who who said no downers but I just keep thinkin’—“ Sharky cuts himself off, bites his lip.

Making it about him again, accepting Dep’s self-sacrifice. No matter his reason for killing them, the other deputies had been Dep’s friends and now they are gone by his hand. Hurk and Nick and Grace and Jess were his friends too. Hope County and shared tragedy, there is nothing unique in their loss.

Sharky doesn’t deserve to be the only one who mourns.

Dep doesn’t deserve the burden placed on him over and over again.

“Thinking?” Dep prompts.

“Nothin’. I don’t know.”

The hand on Sharky’s shoulder tightens. The metal bed frame protests as Dep pulls Sharky further onto the mattress. Slotting the two of them together. It’s not sexual, though as little as four hours ago such a move would have had Sharky well on the way to aroused.

Or more accurately, it still does, clenches in his gut in a way that is wholly inappropriate for the moment. It’s just this time, Sharky has the tact to ignore it.

“Don’t do that,” Dep says. “Don’t shut me out, Shark, please. What are you thinking?”

There are too many thoughts for him to even begin to list them. He shakes his head. He licks his lips. “I’m not trynna shut you out, Dep,” Sharky says. His hands raise to cup Dep’s jaw.

Being tactful though, here at the end of all things. Tasteful. His thumb catches on Dep’s lip. Presses in, briefly, nail catching on a canine before Sharky pulls it back. Tasteful. Hugging a cold blooded murderer against his chest, one who just happened to be on the right side for most of the fight.

Which isn’t fair; isn’t entirely true.

“You’ve killed a lot of people,” Sharky says, “so like what are three more.”

Dep’s eyes close. “If I tell you why. If I tell you what happened...there’s not anything—it can’t be taken back, it happened and-and-and it can’t un-happen so.” His eyes open. Brows flexed, expression hard, closed off. Teeth clicking shut, grinding together. Muscle in his jaw going click, click, like clockwork. “So yeah, you’re right. What’s three more bodies to the count?”

It’s nothing.

Sharky’s fingers twitch.

Nothing.

“Nothin’,” Sharky agrees. “If you don’t wanna talk about you don’t gotta.”

“Do you honestly want me to?”

“I don’t know how else I’m supposed to understand you. We’re stuck down here together and-and like before, you know if this had happened yesterday, I’d be sad cuz all our friends are dead and my like house is gone and all my records and my tuck and you know,” Sharky swallows, silent for a moment as he finds the track back to his point. “But I-I mean, it’d be okay cuz I have you and like I-I-I—

“I was really, really falling hard like some dumbass pop song and now this this whole thing. Not the end of the world thing but this whole maybe you aren’t the cool badass cop I had kinda gotten to know but some other sorta badass but also psychotic cop thing. It’s just...thrown me, I guess.”

Dep listens, silent, as Sharky’s words wind down. Not talked himself out, but paused, letting Dep absorb it. When Dep says nothing, but also doesn’t pull away, or stiffen, or extract himself from the hold Sharky has on his cheeks, Sharky begins again. Slower. Bargaining.

“I just wanna know who you are—really are—cuz it’s not like I’m gonna just uhh forget what your dick tastes like or-or-or how I feel about you. Proximity uhh you know what it is being all-all together with no other real option. I mean—Jesus I fuckin’ love you, Dep. Okay? Okay. Like there it is. My cards on the table.”

Dep blinks. He swallows. His breath bursts across the bridge of Sharky’s nose. “What?”

“What?”

“Do you mean that?”

“I...yeah. It’s like. I mean I thought I...” Sharky swallows. “It isn’t a big deal or anything. It’s not like we needed to talk about it before. I mean I...what was I gonna say? ‘Thanks for the blow job, hey you know I love you?’ Or uhh: ‘wow, Dep, great shot there taggin’ that Peggie through the eye, damn do I love you?’. I don’t even know your fuckin’ name, Dep.”

“You never asked.”

“You never volunteered it either.”

Dep licks his lips, bites them. Cheeks moving beneath Sharky’s palms. “I thought you didn’t want to know.”

“Yeah well,” Sharky swallows again, dry, he’s parched, goddamn. He presses his thumb to Dep’s lip, drags along the line of it, the moisture against his skin. “That was my mistake. Thinkin’ you were...were so cool. This immortal, superhuman thing. It was wrong of me. No better than everyone else I guess. Expectin’ everything from you and not even asking—“

“It’s Isaac,” Dep says. Isaac says. “You can shut up with that shit okay? It’s Isaac.”

“Isaac and Charlemagne, what a goddamn pair.”

“Sharky and Dep is so much better,” Dep says, rolling his eyes. Sarcasm. It’s almost refreshing.

The feeling settling in Sharky’s gut. Another form of peace, more stable than the last. Hashing shit out, airing it. Refreshing. But they aren’t done and it’s kind of now or never when it comes to deep emotions, Sharky knows. You take the plunge or you never do.

“So why did you kill them? Were you blissed? All angel-zombied out?”

“Not really. It’d be easy to say yeah, to-to-to take that answer but...but no. You deserve to hear the truth and the truth is Jacob Seed did some shit in my head and-and...” he trails off.

“You Hulk out?”

Dep winces. “That’s a way of...of putting it but. I suppose it’s very scientific, all very methodical. There’s a trigger, I’m a bullet. Action, reaction. And every time it happens people die, I kill them. Do you remember Eli?”

Sharky has to think about it. Eli? Eli. Right Whitetails. They’d all gotten drunk off freedom and moonshine and burned his body in the woods just after the liberation of Jacob’s bunker. Sharky hadn’t really joined in, the cheering and the gun-waving part at least, he’d nursed a hip flask of booze and laughed with Hurk at Dep stuck in the center of the celebrating like some awkward, worshiped idol.

“Sure, I remember.”

“Killed him too. The night you let me...”

Dep’s clammy skin. His shuddering breathing. Shaky and shaken and Sharky had just taken, distracted and figured it done.

“Shit. I’m sorry,” Sharky says.

“For trusting me enough to let me fuck you? I’m not complaining. I...it helped, a little, maybe. I wouldn’t take it back, not for the anything.”

“Fuckin’ sappy.”

Dep nods, pushes his head closer. Their foreheads touch. Something very Joseph Seed in the motion of it, gut wrenching, Sharky forcibly divorces himself from the association.

“Could it happen again?”

He doesn’t clarify that he doesn’t mean the sex. He doesn’t think he needs to.

Dep’s eyes are closed, too close to see properly anyway, but Sharky keeps watching anyway, gaze flickering from side to side, to each fluttering lid and sweeping lash.

“Yeah,” Dep says.

“And you’d kill me?”

Dep bites his lip. Catches Sharky’s finger right at the corner and presses down just a little too hard. “I can’t...I can’t assure you that I won’t.”

“So long as you’d feel bad about it.”

Dep’s eyes open. They are green up close, flecked with brown that darkens them at a distance. Sharky’s never particularly focused on the color when there’s so much more interesting parts to Dep’s anatomy. It’s another crime in their relationship, Dep has really beautiful eyes.

“Don’t joke like that, please.”

“Thought you liked my teasing.”

“Shut up, man.”

And Sharky does. But it’s only cuz he’s tipping head forward and they’re kissing and he learned pretty early on in his adolescence that it isn’t a great idea to talk and makeout.

It doesn’t last all that long anyway. Eventually Dep pulls back enough to lower himself, tucking his chin against Sharky’s collar, the heat of his breath warming Sharky’s hoodie right over his heart.

The generator putters, the air filter flips over—another hum Sharky hadn’t noticed until this minute, a metronomic ticking. Lifesaving and also impossible to ignore.

This is their lives now.

At least it’s not fuckin’ crickets.

Sharky closes his eyes, curling closer to Dep—to Isaac, who is already asleep against his chest. He lets himself drift.

Eventually he sleeps.

There will be things they need to handle in when they wake, insurmountable, impossible survival in the wake of tragedy. Things that will not be put off, cannot be. For now though, they can. They will.

They sleep, it’s as good a place to start as any.

**Author's Note:**

> Thhhhhhere it is. Do you know sometimes I wish I could just write happy shit? If anyone wants to send me some feel good happy prompts please hit me up on my tumblr (vrunkawrites) because this is all just too depressing lol


End file.
